Life did not use to be this complicated.
Ten minutes later, I get a reply with a time and a flight number, which I forward on to Mum. She’ll offer to pick him up, he’ll refuse because he doesn’t do well as a passenger unless it’s Vic driving, and he’ll probably get to Huntington about an hour before she does.
Which still leaves me with most of a day to fill, and a little too much fury to risk going to chess.
Another few minutes, and my phone dings with an email from Agent Finnegan with the names of the two agents he’s sending out to pick up the flowers. It should take about an hour from Denver.
They pull in forty minutes later, lights flashing from their black SUV. I’m in the kitchen, sitting in the little nook at the window and poking a spoon into a bowl of congealed oatmeal. As you do. The agents are young, probably not long out of the academy, one of them a pretty blonde who’ll have to fight tooth and nail to ever get respected in her field, the other a broad-shouldered black man with shoulders that suggest he got a football ride through college.
“Priya Sravasti?” the man calls through the front door after knocking. “I’m Agent Archer, this is Agent Sterling. Agent Finnegan sent us.”
Through the window, I can see Sterling already crouching by the lilies, blue neoprene gloves on her hands.
I check the email with the names again, then head to the door. “You guys make good time.”
Agent Archer smiles, warm and easy but still professional. “Finney—Agent Finnegan—told us he’d consider it a personal favor if we took up as little of your day as possible.”
Vic has some good friends, I think.
Archer asks me a few questions—did I touch the flowers, did I see or hear anyone, do I feel safe staying on my own?—all things that I already sent in the email to Finney, but more than most people, I suppose, I understand that this is the job, even when it seems a little redundant. So I answer patiently, even when he purposefully repeats himself to see if my answer changes or if I remember something new.
As we talk, Sterling examines the bouquet carefully, making sure not to dislodge anything in the wrapping. The tissue paper is that same cheerful spring green, the color sharp, and the folds are still visible from the packaging. When she’s seen as much as can be seen without unwrapping it, she lowers the bouquet gently into a large plastic bag and tapes it shut. Her writing across the bag and seal is a little rough, awkward where the plastic pleats. It seems like it would be easier to label it before the bag is sealed.
Then again, they probably have to guarantee that what’s on the label is what’s in the bag, which is harder to do if it’s prelabeled.
Sterling takes the bagged bouquet to their car and puts it in a lockbox in the trunk. Then she pulls out a stepladder and a pair of toolboxes.
I look at Archer.
He smiles again and tucks his small notebook into his coat pocket. “Finney said your mother’s company approved the cameras; we’ll get them set up while we’re here.”
“Boxes are in there,” I tell him, pointing at the coat closet. “They’re a brand your Agent Finnegan recommended.”
“Front and back, any other doors?”
“No.”
I walk Sterling through the house to the back door. Mum and I honestly kind of forgot there was a back door until Finnegan asked to check if any flowers were there. There weren’t, and the fence makes that yard a little difficult to get to discreetly, but it makes more sense to have a camera there than not.
Just in case.
From her toolbox, Sterling pulls a rolled-up kit that hooks neatly over the door like a wreath hanger. It has all sorts of pockets on it, so all her tools are in easy reach when she’s up on the stepladder. It’s kind of genius, really.
Archer, however, does not have one, so I shrug into my coat and join him on the front step, and when he points to a thing, I hand it to him. Our kitchen stepstool is sturdy enough for me and Mum, but it creaks under the agent whenever he shifts his weight.
“I studied your sister’s case at the academy,” he says after a while, the wires for the camera tangled through his fingers.
I should probably respond, at least make some kind of polite acknowledgment.
I don’t.
He doesn’t seem put off by that. “They have us go through some open unsolveds, so we know before we get to the field that we can’t settle every case. Hand me those pliers, please? The needle-nose?”
I do.
“You must really miss your sister.”
“It’s not something I like to discuss.”
His hands still. “I guess not,” he mutters. For a while he works in silence. One of the neighbors across the street waves as she hauls her twin toddlers to her van. I wave back, even though she isn’t looking anymore, because one of the boys is. Archer clears his throat. “I’m sorry.”
“For?”
“It was inappropriate of me to get personal. I was just trying to make conversation.”
“Conversation is the weather, Agent Archer, or traffic. Spring training. I don’t really need to know that you’ve probably seen naked photos of my dead sister.” I watch the van pull out of the drive. The other twin presses his face against the window in an unsuccessful raspberry; I give him a little wave all his own. “I’m aware the academy uses the case as a teaching tool; Agent Hanoverian warned us a few years ago.”
“But you gave permission, or your mother did.”
“We didn’t. We weren’t asked. The FBI is allowed to use its own cases to train new agents; they don’t have to have permission from victims or families. Let me guess: you found the case fascinating and you’re grateful for the chance to work on it?”
“Something like that.”
“Don’t be grateful. That means being glad terrible things are happening.”
“Hanoverian lectures at the academy from time to time. He’s pretty big on gratitude.” He points at an Allen wrench, so I hand it to him.
“Do you listen to what he’s grateful for?”
“Finney didn’t tell us you were feisty.”
I eye the stepstool, then decide there’s no way to kick it out from under him without risking injury to myself. Vic would be disappointed if I broke an agent; Eddison would be pissed if I broke myself. “I’m going to check on Sterling.”
When I carefully open the back door, Sterling glances at me and shakes her head. “I told him not to bring it up.”
“So you studied it too?”
“When I was in middle school, my best friend and I walked home one day to find her father getting arrested for a series of murders. What he did to those women . . . the day we studied him, I went home and spent the rest of the night throwing up, because I used to spend the night at his house once or twice a week. I’ve never told her.”
“Why not?” Would it make a difference, coming from a friend?
“It shaped her life enough; why should I add to it?” Dusting her hands, she unhooks her kit and steps down the ladder. “I’d guess you already live your sister’s case every day. Do you need me to talk to him?”
“Not this time. We’ll see if it happens again.”
I appreciate it, though, that she’s willing. She looks young, probably not long out of the academy, and taking a senior partner to task can’t be easy.
“Let’s make sure your computer can communicate with the cameras, and then we’ll be out of your hair.” With a small, sideways kind of smile, she hands me a business card. “That has my cell and email, if you need something and Finney’s busy.”
“We’re going to get along just fine, Agent Sterling.”
Archer’s the one who actually gets everything linked up, but Sterling shows me how to scan through and isolate time stamps, and how to grab a screenshot from the stream and attach it directly to email without having to save it first. Once I show her I’m comfortable with it, they gear up to go.